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Berry Tramel: Truth is, Big 12 remains a stout football league

One by one, the Big 12's football coaches walked onto a stage in the Westin Galleria ballroom July 25 in Dallas, during the league's media bonanza.

Big 12 football sit next to the podium as Oklahoma State head coach Mike Gundy answers questions during NCAA college football Big 12 Media Days, Monday, July 25, 2011, in Dallas. (AP Photo/Matt Strasen) ORG XMIT: TXMS111

Most looked as comfortable as Tom Sawyer in church. Puppets on a podium. Football coaches like the rest of us to be puppets; they're not so crazy about it themselves.

They just stood there, shoulder to shoulder, not daring to grin while they tried to bear it, after a video spouted nonsense about the glories of the new Big 12. Of unity and togetherness and esprit de corps.

“No longer a house divided between North and South,” the video proclaimed, “the Big 12 is one conference with one purpose, with one set of values. Around here ... we believe in battling each other on Saturday and having each other's back come Sunday.”

I swear, you can't make this stuff up.

The presentation didn't even include all 10 coaches. Texas Tech's Tommy Tuberville, who last summer was sent to the woodshed for daring to utter that the conference wouldn't last, skipped the dog and pony show. Tuberville was playing golf with boosters; I know nine men who wished they were doing the same. Playing golf with Tech boosters.

Anyway, among the nine was A&M coach Mike Sherman, who missed his calling. Should have been a pro poker player. Sherman stood there stiff and stoic and silent, a Trojan horse, knowing his Aggies were about to spill all over the Brazos, leading a charge to the SEC.

The Big 12 spent $1 million with GSD&M Idea City, an Austin marketing agency, to come up with this campaign, which now has gone splat. The only question is whether the Big 12 pancakes, too.

But if the league survives, it's got to stop trying to snow people. Got to stop trying to convince us that up is down and down is up. That 10 is better than 12, that no championship game somehow assures one true champion, that divisional play created a schism that has healed with the departures of Nebraska and Colorado.

Here's a marketing campaign. Just tell the truth.

Just stand up and tell America, hey, the Big 12 is one heck of a football league.

The Big 12 has three preseason top-10 teams, including the No. 1 Sooners. The Big 12 has the great Longhorn morality play, a program with so many riches it's running off worthy foes, yet somehow still lost at home last year to Iowa State and Baylor. The Big 12 has Missouri. The Big 12 has Bill Snyder, a better coach than Pop Warner or Woodrow Hayes.

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Berry Tramel, a lifelong Oklahoman, sports fan and newspaper reader, joined The Oklahoman in 1991 and has served as beat writer, assistant sports editor, sports editor and columnist. Tramel grew up reading four daily newspapers — The Oklahoman,...